


Painted in Hell

by objectlesson



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blood, Conversations, M/M, Post-Coital, Season 2, Season 2 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 11:55:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4563657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Love and hate are not so dissimilar,” Hannibal begins. “They are both passionate, intimate ways to regard another human being. They are often mistaken for opposites, when indifference is the opposite of both love and hate.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Painted in Hell

**Author's Note:**

> WOW this is the shortest thing I've written in years. I tend to be long winded so this was very refreshing. Just a few post coital discussions of love, hate, sex, and death, and how they're all basically the same dirty thing.

Will awakes adhered to egyptian cotton sometime before dawn, naked and bathed in sweat. He blinks away the blood-haze behind his eyelids, familiar nightmares of snow shining under moonlight, bones cracking beneath his knuckles, black feathers mired in gore. He can feel the heat of Hannibal’s body beside him, and in spite of every ounce of better judgement, he is comforted by it. 

Will inhales raggedly, wondering with a crushed and shamed smile when he became the sort of man who found comfort with the devil. Or if he was always that man, and he is only just beginning to realize it, looking in the mirror without his vision unobscured by the dream of a better self. 

In the dark he feels Hannibal stir, sighs as the solid weight of him shifts closer, reaches for him and draws him against the infernal heat of his chest. “You’re not sleeping,” Hannibal murmurs low into his ear, making him shiver, his perspiration sticky skin erupting into gooseflesh. “What can I do?” 

“I’m sleeping,” Will says, voice a scrape in the night, hoarse and ragged. “Well, not anymore. But I was. Just, dreaming. You don’t have to do anything.” 

“Bad dreams,” Hannibal says knowingly, propping himself up on his elbow beside Will, bearing down upon him like an eclipse. Will feels so contained, so consumed, so throughly _swaddled_ in his darkness, as if Hannibal is covering him with two heavy leather wings, suffocating him. Will would be lying if he says it didn’t feel good. If it didn’t move him as much as it terrifies him, disgusts him. 

He fits his hand into the junction of Hannibal’s neck and shoulder, palming over the thrum of his pulse. “No worse than usual.” 

“It is one of my greatest desires to provide you with a sound night’s sleep. To chase the demons from your mind, so that you can truly rest.”

Will makes a noise, scoffing because Hannibal Lector _is_ his demon, is the source of his nightmares, the spit upon which his insomnia was roasted to perfection. The reason he cannot sleep normally in the first place. “Chase them from my mind since they’re already in my bed, right?” he mumbles, lips against Hannibal’s temple. 

“Perhaps,” Hannibal says, smoothing a palm up his chest. “Though we are presently in my bed.” 

“It’s bigger. And nicer,” Will admits, feeling his heart beginning to slow to steadiness beneath the weight of Hannibal’s hand. It seems impossible, that it is hell’s palms which soothe him to silence. He longs briefly for the simplicity of hating Hannibal as he only very recently did, loathing him for ruining him, before he understood why he did it, when he needed to fashion a counterpart from Will’s bones. That hate, it felt pure. Now he feels muddy. Good, whole. But muddy. 

“It is, indeed, bigger and nicer. I only wish those factors alone were enough to bring you peace,” Hannibal says, voice muffled as he mouths along Will’s jaw, licking sweat from the hollow of his throat, breath hot and gentle and maddening. Will closes his eyes, lets the sensations wash over him, sully him, baptize him. He doesn’t know anymore. He’s not entirely sure why he’s even here, if this is all a part of his fisherman’s game, luring Hannibal to him in the only way he knows how, or if he’s here because he _wants_ to be, because he has no other choice, is powerless against Hannibal’s desire for him. 

“Peace,” Will starts, yawning, “Is too ambitious to even strive for, with sleep. Waking up once or twice in bed still is fine, it’s a miracle. I’ll take it.” 

“And I,” Hannibal says. “For now. Though I would prefer to give you more. I seek your elusive peace, Will, and I intend to give it to you.” 

Will stills, shudders. Hannibal does this to him, reaches down his throat and closes his fist around his heart, squeezing, until there is nothing he can do to survive but adapt to that pressure.   
Hannibal’s hand is still roving across Will’s chest, tracing the ladder of his ribs, palming down between his pectorals, thumbing over his clavicles. It’s all very intentional touch, that of a sculptor, an artist, a surgeon, a murderer. The touch of someone who knows anatomy so intimately he can imagine the structure beneath the skin, the bone frame and the muscles laid atop it. Will shivers, sick with the wave of heat which strikes his gut as he imagines Hannibal flaying into him, cracking his ribcage apart to expose his heart, affixing his mouth to the torn aorta, swallowing its dying spurts of blood as he knows he would, as he knows he _wants_. Hannibal wants to give him everything; he’s made that inarguably clear. 

“Good luck,” Will mumbles, hands in Hannibal’s hair, down the flexing planes of his back, hard and glorious. 

And he loves the way Hannibal arches up into his hands; he loves that Hannibal pins his shoulders to the bed before taking his face firmly between the stretch of his palms and says like it is gospel, “Luck isn’t necessary, where there is devotion.” 

Will loves it all, and he hates how he loves it. 

\---

Dripping sweat from his brow and arms braced against the counter, Will is overcome. He grits his teeth, rocking in time with Hannibal’s measured thrusts. He’s not fucking him, just fucking _against_ him, into the damp, hot crease of his ass, the pantomime of real sex and somehow, it feels dirtier than being fucked. Will certainly feels dirty, with his legs spread as much as the tangle of his unbuckled pants and belt will allow him, dirty with Hannibal’s teeth in the back of his neck like an animal. 

Jaw set tight like he’s in pain, Will feels Hannibal come unexpectedly against him, hot ribbons on his back, his thighs. _Painted in hell_ , he thinks, and the thought alone makes him follow, eyes whiting out in static as he spills over Hannibal’s fist. It lands on the granite countertop, pearl upon the mica flecked slate, and as Will opens his eyes he stares at it. He’s afraid to look at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror, afraid to see himself flushed and ruined and broken open under Hannibal. He does it anyway; it is one of many urges he’s been powerless against since crawling into the lair of the beast. Will met his own eyes, stunned by the labored mess of his breath, the way his hair has been worked to chaos by Hannibal’s hands. He looks less than human, or perhaps _beyond_ human. He blinks. Nothing changes. 

Hannibal’s eyes are also studying his reflection in the mirror, his chin resting atop Will’s shoulder, a few strands of hair which have come loose from the rest now affixed to his brow with a fine layer of sweat. Will watches Hannibal watch him, and feels like meat. It’s a feeling he has grown accustomed to, and one that no longer frightens him. He knows now that Hannibal wants him, _needs_ him alive too badly to follow through in killing and consuming him, regardless of how he may want to in his basest of fantasies. 

He drops his gaze the moment it meets Hannibal’s in the mirror, cutting back down to the splatter of seed on shining stone. “No,” Hannibal murmurs, lips at this throat, just before the ghosting of teeth. He threads his hand into the damp ruin of Will’s hair and pulls his head back, forces him to look at himself again, his swollen panting mouth and eyes tar black with pupil. “You are far too lovely to look away from,” he says. 

Together, they stare, until Will’s legs begin to shake and Hannibal’s come begins to cool and dry and adhere them together. Until Will’s eyes grow bleary, wet, hazy, blending their reflections into an indiscernible wreck of skin, of blood, of meat. He blinks, but it doesn’t go away. 

\---

The dogs mill around on the carpet, sniffing at the crack under the door and licking anxiously at the bottom of their bowls. Will can hear the sounds of their unrest, their nails clicking on the hard wood, their muted whines. Still, he cannot move. He can’t do anything; he doesn’t have the energy or the motivation, not when he’s pressed up against Hannibal, thighs still tingling and aching from how hard he came only moments ago. It’s easy, when he’s still recovering from the throes of orgasm, to admit what Hannibal does to him. To accept that he’s lost himself and cannot even care, that he’s been altered, transformed, warped, fractured. He sighs a sigh like drowning, and remains. 

“What are you thinking about?” Hannibal asks, thumbing over his lips, breath soft against Will’s brow. 

“Serial killers,” Will mumbles, reaching clumsily for the sheet to tug it over himself, now that he’s aware he’s exposed, raw. Hannibal slides his palm beneath the sheet, rubbing over the upper inside of Will’s thigh, skin still nervy and sensitive.

“Oh?” Hannibal says, and Will feels him smile against his temple. “You and I? Or other, lesser murderers?” 

_I’m not a murderer_ Will wants to say, but stops himself. It is neither true, nor necessary. He is still invested in making Hannibal believe he’s here with him, every inch of him. Even if it means committing to it, being here, every inch of him. Until something has to change. He coughs, squinting. “No. Um, I was thinking about a case I worked years ago, when I was still a cop. One of the ones that drove me to give it up, actually.” 

“One you connected to deeply with? Another Garret Jacob Hobbs?” Hannibal asks. 

“No, not quite,” Will sighs, twitching under Hannibal’s hands, skin crawling at the name on his lips. He still sees Garret Jacob Hobbs in his dreams, in his periphery. Perhaps he could see this man, too, if he tried. “His name was Mark Jacobson; he also killed girls. Dressed them, embalmed them, kept them in his house. He, um. He didn’t want them to leave him.” 

Hannibal nods against him, kissing a path from the corner of his mouth to his hairline, the soft, insistent brush of lips. “Mark Jacobson. I believe I recall reading reports concerning him in psychiatric publications. They called him the Dollmaker.” 

Will nods, his motion constricted by the grip Hannibal has on him. It’s always like this; they lie side by side and speak as they do in Hannibal’s office, across Hannibal’s table. But because there is no space separating their chairs, no professional distance or a meal laid out between them, Hannibal is upon him like a falcon picking fur and flesh from bone, touching him constantly, tenderly, relentlessly. It makes it difficult for Will to survive without it. “Yeah, the Dollmaker,” Will says quietly. “Before he was apprehended, there was a lot of talk. People, other cops, they kept saying ‘this guy hates women.’ Like he was any other sexual sadist, you know. But, it’s not what I felt.” 

“And what did you feel?” Hannibal asks. 

“Love,” Will whispers, eyes twitching beneath the shut lids. It’s easier to utter such a word when his eyes are closed, when he’s not fully aware of Hannibal’s focused scrutiny of him. “The Dollmaker loved women. Or at least he thought he did, he loved them so much he couldn’t stand to be away from him, could’t stand to be left by them. Every crime scene felt _imbrued_ with his love.” 

Hannibal’s hand stills to a fluttering stop at Will’s throat, fingers pressing into the whorls of cartilage there, the ridges and valleys and the steady thrum of his jugular. Will swallows, imagining how easily Hannibal could choke him to death, and marveling at the comfort which comes in the wake of such a thought. “Love and hate are not so dissimilar,” Hannibal begins. “They are both passionate, intimate ways to regard another human being. They are often mistaken for opposites, when indifference is the opposite of both love and hate.” 

“The Dollmaker was certainly not _indifferent_ to women,” Will mumbles. 

“And you are certainly not indifferent to me,” Hannibal adds. “That is what we are truly addressing, correct? Your hatred of me, and what it is inevitably coupled with?” 

Eyes snapping open beyond his control, Will cranes his neck to glare at Hannibal. “Are you trying to get me to confess my love to you?” he asks, making a face. 

“Not confess,” Hannibal says, mouth curved into the subtlest of smiles. His pupils glitter, terrible, inhuman. _Beyond_ human. “Just discuss.” 

Will shrugs, settling against Hannibal, thinking he should really let the dogs out but it’s so hard to move, so hard to crawl from the den of a monster when it’s given you everything you ever wanted, even the things you didn’t know you wanted until you were staring at the world from behind the snap of its jaws. “What’s there to discuss? You said it yourself, it’s inevitable.” 

“Do you still fantasize about killing me?” Hannibal asks, grip tightening almost imperceptibly around Will’s throat before he releases it, palming down his chest instead. 

“Sometimes,” Will admits. “The fantasy wasn’t _replaced_ with fucking you, if that’s what you’re asking. Perhaps _augmented_ by it, but not replaced.” 

“I’m sure you’re familiar with the French turn of phrase _le petit mort_. Like love and hate, sex and death are also metonymically connected. Tell me, Will. Does it arouse you to imagine killing me?”

Will snorts, rolls over and away from Hannibal, curling in on himself. Hannibal follows him, a pursuit like a fox and before Will can respond he’s again in Hannibal’s mouth, in his arms, ribcage trapped beneath his forearm and pulse back under his lips. “Yes,” he says. It’s the truth. Even before they actually started fucking, the idea of using his hands on Hannibal’s throat, breaking and breaking until he saw the life fade from his eyes like sun from the sky at dusk, was erotic. The reality of fucking him hasn’t changed that; it’s only intensified it, brought into stark relief in his mind like plate tectonics shifting into mountains. 

Hannibal presses a lingering kiss just below his jaw, lips scraping over stubble. Will shivers. “It arouses me to think of you being aroused by the notion of killing me. When you were in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, I would often lie awake at night, indulging in the idea of your hatred for me. It felt like love. Maybe it was, as it is, now.” 

Will shuts his eyes tight, bowled over by the blade of Hannibal’s honesty, sick with the way it gets under his skin, pulls the muscle away from the bone. He inhales shakily, but does not say anything. There is nothing to say. 

\---

 

From the ground, from a spreading puddle of his own death, Will finds himself reflected back in the wells of betrayal that are Hannibal Lecter’s eyes. He wants to say sorry, he wants to take it all back. He doesn’t even hate himself for it; it feels pure again. Love unmuddied by hate, as crystalline and simple as the hate felt when it was unmuddied by love. As Will bleeds to death on the floor of Hannibal’s kitchen, all he can feel save for love, is regret. 

He blinks around the pain, scrambles, wishes he could crawl into the past. Just a few hours ago, so that he could follow Hannibal into the darkest of rooms. Wherever he wanted to go. He thinks of killing him, embalming him, immortalizing him so that he will never leave. 

It is Hannibal who leaves. Leaves him for the rain, and Will sinks into a sea of blood, into a sea of regret. _Painted in hell_ , he thinks, aching, and closes his eyes. 

\---


End file.
